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three column width problem craziness

hello all,

I am trying to use the following code to produce a three column table*. A couple of problems: the right-hand column maintains a width that I just can not change. Regardless of how I adjust its or any other values it stay keeps a static width. It would be OK if it moved over to the right far, but I can't do that either. The second problem appears in FF where I can't get the left menu content to move up to where it should be at the top. ...making me crazy. It looks crappy in IE and FF.

First of all I should ask if you really need to use an example as complicated as this. Unless you understand how it works then it will make your life miserable because you won't know where to change things to make them fit.

You haven't specified a width for one of the columns so it will be content width which effectively means it will grow to 100&#37; and therefore won't fit anywhere except on its own row.

To make room for the right column you would need to change the centre columns width which is also inside an inner wrapper which holds the left and center column. Therefore you need to change these in tandem so that room is made for the right column. This is due to the content first method being used.

I have coloured some elements here so you can see where they are placed and it might be easier for you to work out where you are going with this.

I'm not sure why you are putting a table in the middle column anyway unless its for tabular data.

However, as you have a fixed width layout then you would be better off floating all three columns and then just shifting them with relative positioning to get the content first effect. Here is an example:

Hi Paul,
thanks for getting back to me.
I do feel lost. I've looked at your examples and have to think more on them. I'm going to give them a try in the meantime.
Here is an illustration of what I'd like: http://mwebm.net/trials/sample01.jpg
this explains visually what I am trying to accomplish.
The table has to be there, it's an ecommerce site with the sales content needing to be in the center.
hopefully that helps.
thank you